Andrew W.K., Humility, and Prayer

I confess that I didn't expect to read Andrew W.K. on the subject of prayer this weekend. And what's more, I certainly wasn't anticipating one of the best secular meditations on the topic from the erstwhile (and contemporaneously) hard partier. Inspiration comes from the unlikeliest sources, it seems.

In response to a question from a prayer-skeptical reader of his weekly Village Voice advice column (described thusly: Every Wednesday, New York City's own Andrew W.K. takes your life questions and sets you safely down the right path to a solution, a purpose or — no surprise here — a party.), Andrew offered a thoughtful response grounded in accepting unknowns and embracing our own vulnerability.

There are so many powerful messages in the column, but W.K.'s notion of comfort with the impossibility of universal knowledge and foundational importance of acceptance of uncertainty really resonated with me. "To know that you don't know is the definition of a spiritual awakening", he writes.

It's not our intent to get all Jack Handey on the world today, and I, for one, am looking forward to tomorrow's Ghoogles post. But we could all do worse than thinking about Andrew W.K.'s words. Because they really are wisdom.

"Being humble is very hard for many people because it makes them feel unimportant and helpless. To embrace our own smallness is not to say we're dumb or that we don't matter, but to realize how amazing it is that we exist at all in the midst of so much more. To be fully alive, we must realize how much else there is besides ourselves. We must accept how much we don't know — and how much we still have to learn — about ourselves and the whole world. Kneeling down and fully comprehending the incomprehensible is the physical act of displaying our respect for everything that isn't "us.""